The Lord’s Prayer // Your Kingdom Come

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 11/11/12

Drawn by the Holy Spirit,

accompanied by our savior and brother Jesus,

we come to our loving, powerful Father in the heavens,

settled confidently in the place of prayer,

longing for everything in our own life,

in our families, in our communities,

in our world to be set right,

starting with Papa’s reputation growing glorious again

as he fulfills his promises to us and through us.

Ah, sounds beautiful right?

Not necessarily our experience, not at first... (reality check...).

But as the spiritual practice of praying as Jesus teaches us does its intended work, our souls will come to anticipate prayer as this kind of experience.

Further up, further in: Jesus teaches us to pray “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Thesis: when we pray “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” Jesus means for us to be asking for real things to happen, in the real places that we live, in the real lives of the people we live with. In our own real lives.

Specifically, we are asking that God would

release his captive children,

defeat evil in every corner of our lives and this world,

and in the end, be in charge of everything everywhere,

because as he does we will experience true freedom and love,

we will know peace,

and our the purpose of our lives will come into view.

[Reminder of purpose of Jesus teaching on prayer, participating with Jesus in his liberation mission, learning to live lives that make sense in light of the good news of the kingdom……what exactly does it mean for God’s kingdom to come, for his will to be done, on earth as it is in heaven? We’ll only know as we pray and see how God answers. This part of the prayer is a little like a knock knock joke:

Knock Knock.

Who's there?

Jess.

Jess who?

Jess me, open the door!

Hope for today is simply that we would be convinced to get involved daily in the asking, whatever the answers may be]

Ever been subject to bad authority? A bad teacher or coach…? A bad boss…? [Horrible Bosses clip, gam gam…  

]

Bad authority is impersonal, incompetent, and oppressive. Ever had to fight a bureaucracy unsympathetic to your needs…? Experienced racial or other discriminatory oppression…? Grown up in a family with parents who were over their heads, or had some chip on their shoulder towards you, or were simply preoccupied with other concerns, work, addiction, emotional disorders…? The longing we experience in those situations has the same root as the longing we have for God’s kingdom to come, his will to be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

[Monty Python and the Holy Grail clip, chapter 4, 8:50-12:00]

Human beings are withered, crippled, and suffocated by impersonal, incompetent, and oppressive authority.

We have a deep longing

to be recognized as valuable within our communities,

to live in secured order,

to have breathing room to grow and create… [examples]

When Jesus taught his followers to pray “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, he was speaking to people who were sick and tired of the powers that be.

The people Jesus was teaching to pray were longing for a new king. The Roman emperors were a curse to Israel. The Herodian kings were a cruel joke.

Jesus’ students, and in fact most of Israel, clung to the promises given through the great prophets of Israel that YHWH would establish his kingdom, taking up the throne in Jerusalem, defeating and displacing every other king. YHWH’s kingdom would be bathed in beauty and love, its goodness would be unshakable, and the children of God would bloom in the radiance of his favor.

Isn’t our longing the same too, sometimes? Or at least, it would be, if we knew what it would mean for God’s kingdom to come.

The promise of God's kingdom Israel was clinging to had three main parts: (1) release from captivity for Israel, (2) the defeat of evil, and (3) the return of YHWH to Zion, to the throne in Jerusalem. When Jesus taught his disciples to pray in this way, he was already implementing each of these three aspects of God’s coming kingdom, although in radically different ways than expected.

The first great symbol of release for captive Israel was the Exodus story (recap); Jesus told a new story, a story about a son who leaves his Father’s house for the lure of life in a pagan country. His listeners would have understood that son to be Israel in exile, wasting its inheritance and ending up with pig slop. But the astonishing end to Jesus' story is the son returning in repentance and shame to the Father’s house, only to be welcomed by the Father running towards him with open arms, embracing him, giving him new clothes, the family ring, sandals on his feet, and throwing a huge feast. By eating with sinners, healing outcasts, calling misfits to be his disciples, Jesus was saying that the release from captivity has begun, the new and final exodus is at hand. God is, at last, through Jesus, welcoming home with open arms those who have been enslaved in a far off land.

Similarly, Jesus was defeating evil, but not in the expected way, the way of the mighty conqueror. Instead, by every form of self-giving love, all the way to death on a cross. Along the way, healing the sick, forgiving sins, casting out tyrannical demons with freeing authority, overwhelming the condemnation that comes with sin through his gracious welcome.

And finally, Jesus was coming to Zion (just another name for the city of Jerusalem) but again, not in the expected way. As a shepherd rescuing lost sheep, with gentleness and grace. In Jesus, YHWH had returned to Zion, lifted up first before the nations on a cross, “King of the Jews” nailed above his head, and then three days later in his glorious resurrection body.

For Jesus’ students, to pray “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” was first a prayer that Jesus would succeed in his mission of releasing captive Israel, defeating evil, and taking up the throne in Jerusalem. And after the resurrection, it became a prayer that that Jesus would succeed through them and through his Holy Spirit in bringing his resurrection life to bear in every corner of the earth, until the day of final resurrection for all of humanity.

So what does that mean for us to pray “Your kingdom come…?”

We don’t have an oppressive king, at least not literally. But if we examine our heart of hearts, we share with Jesus’ first followers the conviction that things are not yet as they should be. Something is off in the order of the world we live in. Whether that offness is in the world’s political systems, or off in our society, our workplaces, our relationships, our families. Sometimes, perhaps even often, the offness is most clearly felt in our own poor governance of our own out-of-control lives.

Like Jesus’ students after his resurrection from the dead, who continued to pray daily that God’s kingdom would come, his will would be done, on earth as it is in heaven, we live in the time of tension between God’s kingdom that has already come and God’s kingdom still yet-to-come in its fullness. Release for the captives has been secured, but many of the captives continue to live in a far off land. Evil has been dealt a death blow, but its dying breath is vile as ever. Jesus has been raised up as the true king, but we live in the time of mercy when subjects of other kingdoms can still renounce their tyrants and declare their allegiance to him before the final judgment comes.

So when we pray, “Your kingdom come,” we ask the Father that his in-breaking kingdom would in fact break in through Jesus, here and now.

That the extravagant welcome of the heavens for the exiles would be felt by those of us who have been in a far off land, by our families, by our neighborhoods, by our workplaces, by every human being on the face of the earth through the compassion of Jesus.

That the evil in our own lives and family and neighborhood and workplaces and world would be borne on the shoulders of the suffering servant, taken to the grave, and destroyed in the pure light of the resurrection.

That every place of power in our own lives and family and neighborhood and workplace and world would receive the humble king who rides on a donkey, the weeping king who grieves for those who reject his peaceful rule and continue to live and die in strife.

As the Father faithfully answers our prayer, we, and in time, the whole earth, will experience the freedom that comes from being full citizens of God’s kingdom. That comes from being deeply valued by the one whose community of divine love is in fact our community. That comes from the settled order of life exalted over death, good exalted over evil. That comes from the benevolent rule of the Servant King whom we are growing to be like, in whose purposes our created lives become gloriously creative.

Practical tips:

1: Start with your body. That's the bit of earth that we have the most direct responsibility for, our bodies. That’s where Jesus started. His body was received with welcome by the Father at his baptism. His body warred with evil in the wilderness, the truth of God’s word winning out over the lies of the enemy. His body was ravaged by evil on the cross, but restored and glorified by the Father in the resurrection. He entered the kingly city bodily on Palm Sunday, he maintains a presence in the newly won territory of this earth through his body, the church, and will take up the throne in the new city in his resurrection body.

Father, release the parts of my body that are captive, enslaved to desires that are not your desires. May the will of my earthly body become your will for it; may it be surrendered to your saving purposes as Jesus’ body is. Help my body to experience the welcome of your embrace, in all its brokenness and shame, that you would give it dignity and purpose, that it would be an agent of your authority, that it would be nourished by the best from your table.

Father, defeat evil in my body. Show your power to be stronger than that which has afflicted me. Heal my sickness and hurt and anxiety and weakness and bad habits. Be the prince of my body’s peace.

Father, establish a throne in my body. Exercise your kingship over every part of it, so that it bears witness to your presence in its every action. Quicken my senses to your presence, that I would recognize you and praise you with it whenever you come near. Make it responsive to your voice, to your touch, to your leading. Strengthen it by your presence and authority. Your kingdom come, your will be done, in my body as it is in heaven.

[then begin to cooperate with his kingdom coming; listening, speaking out loud to God, singing, kneeling, opening hands, raising arms, fasting…also, public steps like baptism, communion]

2. Pray for your emergency contacts. Pray for God's kingdom to come in your most important relationships. The people who once were on your list, or whose list you might be on. Pray for release for the parts of the relationship that are captives. That God would defeat evil in them. That he would establish a throne in them.

3. Pick 6. As the Holy Spirit leads us, we can pray in the same manner for our for our neighbors, our classmates, our co-workers, etc. Pick 6, and pray for them, mostly every day. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

The Lord’s Prayer / Hallowed Be Your Name

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 11/04/2012

Our Father in the heavens, hallowed be your name… (etc.)

Observation: some see God-interested parts of the Lord's prayer (hallowed, kingdom come, will be done...), and self-interested parts of the prayer (feed, forgive, free...). (show of hands?). Try this perspective on for size, see how it fits: it’s all self interested at first, and only becomes God-interested as we become God-interested. Specifically, that ‘hallowed be your name’ is inherently self-interested, to start. Because Jesus is no fool; he knows exactly who he is teaching to pray, and what kind of people we are to start with. This is a real prayer, for real people. And the ‘hallowed be your name’ portion of the prayer is a portion worth praying whole-heartedly, whole-mindedly, a petition that deserves all the strength we can muster, the full attention of our soul.

When Jesus teaches his students to pray in Matthew 6, he's training them to be children in God's kingdom. Starting them off on a path on which you need to be like a child at first, in order to find your footing.

We're relatively sophisticated and worldly wise when it comes to living in the world right in front of our eyes. Like fully grown adults in this grown up world around us. It's become second nature to look out for ourselves, to see the threats around the corner, to know how to stand up for ourselves, to continually strive to get ahead. None of which are especially transferable skills when it comes to kingdom living.

When Jesus announces his coming, present, near, already and almost Kingdom, all that worldly maturity we've developed goes out the window.

Look out for yourself? Nope, that will only keep you from looking out for others with generosity in each hand.

See the threats around the corner? Nope, that will keep you from being open to God’s invitation to walk with him into fearful places with peace.

Stand up for and defend yourself? Nope, that will only keep you from trusting in God to defend you as you go about his business with joy.

Strive to get ahead? Nope, that will only make you miss out on opportunities to serve others while trusting God to lift you up as he desires.

Instead, we must become like children again when we receive his good news, when we put our feet on the path of his new creation. [playing "21" with Ronni's family]

Perhaps we should let those first words be a reminder to us: "Our Father..." This is a prayer for us: new children learning to grow up in a new family.

And now we are at the starting point of our conversation, the starting point of our activity together: “Hallowed be your name.”

“Hallowed” isn't word we use a lot, is it? Hallowed grounds, hallowed heroes, hallowed halls. All Halloweds' Eve (Halloween). It comes from a cool Greek word: "hagiastheto". All our English translations use "hallowed", because it really is the best single word, but it might really work better for us to use a bunch of different words combined together to translate it, even if it comes across a little less elegantly. Here are some plainer English words that reflect more clearly what Jesus was driving at:

· May your name be treasured and loved

· May your name be made holy

· May your name be made great

· May your name be honored

· May your name be uniquely respected

And by name, we’re talking more than just the word or title by which we refer to God. We’re including ideas like reputation, authority, underlying reality. More like what we’d mean when we say, “She dragged my name through the mud...” Or, “Richard Petty and Roger Penske are two of the most respected names in auto racing.” Or, “Stop! In the name of Love...", or alternatively, "You give Love a bad name..." (I played my part, and you played a game...).

Kid's are deeply attached to and affected by the reputation, the Name, of their parents. [Receiving line at visitation for my mom…]

“Your mama” jokes touch this place in kids. “My dad is better than your dad” contests come from this place.

At root, the desire for your parent's name to be treasured, loved, respected - "hallowed" - is a healthy desire. Parents are a child’s world, a child’s foundation. They need to be good, sufficient, have a certain level invincibility, for a child to have the confidence needed for learning to love others, for taking risks, for developing a healthy self-esteem. [Ken Wilson's Legendary Exploits...]

[calling mom a name...my dad understood that...]If a young child’s parents are pre-maturely perceived as weak and insufficient, the child’s world becomes uncertain, confused, scary. Opens the door for a child to be shaped by fear, not love, and fear wreaks all sorts of havoc down the road.

Taking that a step deeper, just as a child’s well-being depends on a recognition of the goodness and greatness of its parents, the human race’s well-being depends on the goodness and greatness of its Father. Our Father is the world’s foundation, its creator, its ultimate source. Learning to love others, taking risks that produce growth, developing a healthy self-esteem depends on our Father’s name being great.

If we human beings don’t fully understand and recognize the “hallowedness” of our Father in the heavens, then the basic order and foundation of our lives fall apart. Disorientation and confusion set in, other forces vie for our attention and love, other forces that cannot deliver on their promise of life and security. The human compass, as Dallas Willard calls that part of us intended to orient us toward God, spins unpredictably, unable to find true north. Lostness is the inevitable result.

The world we live in is a world full of orphans, of fatherless children, of children of less-than-fathers.

Jesus is teaching us to pray, then, that our Father’s reputation would be restored. That our Father’s name would be held by everyone, everywhere, to be unique, supreme, holy. That our Father’s name would be held in higher honor than any other name.

note: we’re not praying that people would stop saying “God!” or that God would take a more prominent role in public life, etc. Churches have a difficult enough time giving God a good name, let alone secular institutions...

Rather, we’re praying that when people’s eyes and minds and hearts and souls (ours included!) are directed towards God, that they, and we, would have the true God in mind, the Famous one, the one who shaped us with his bare hands, who breathed life into our lungs through a holy kiss, the one who delivered the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, the one who is a Father to the fatherless and a Husband to the Husbandless, the one who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. That when we think of God we would think of him as generous, full of favor, abounding in life and joy and happiness and strength for the weak and justice for the oppressed and stronger than every evil thing any of us might face, alone or together.

And not just for His sake, so he can walk through the universe to praise and acclaim. [As if! when God wanted to change his reputation, he came and hung out with sinners, got arrested, and died. There are more direct routes to praise and acclaim, if that's all you're after, aren't there?] No, it's important that our Father's name would be held in high honor, at first, for our sake. This is the sanest, most intelligently self-interested prayer a concerned citizen of the human race can pray. So that we can have a foundation again for our lives. So that we can become healthy, re-oriented, settled. So that we can RELAX. Go to sleep without anxiety. Wake up with confidence. Peace. Joy. Hope. Anticipation of good. So that we can be generous towards one another. Encouraging. Loving.

Because that, more than anything else in this world, is what we and God are doing together. Putting right what has gone terribly wrong in us. Putting right what has gone terribly wrong in this world.

[recap the Lord’s prayer, Our Father in the heavens…]

When you are a child and the rules are being broken all around you, to whom do you go? When you are a child, and you’re hungry, to whom do you go? When you are a child and you’ve been wronged and need things righted, to whom do you go? When you are a child and it thunders and you’re afraid, to whom do you go?

Papa, make your name so great in my life that when everything is falling apart, my first instinct is to run to you instead of trying to hold it all together myself.

Papa, make your name so great in my life that whenever I’m hungry for anything, I see what you’ve got in the cupboard for me before I venture out into the cold in search of food.

Papa, make your name so great in my life that when things are taken from me by people who can’t or won’t pay me back, that I’ll come straight to you with my claim instead of becoming a full-time bill collector.

Papa, make your name so great in my life that instead of running from evil into the arms of fear and despair, I’ll look forward to seeing what you’re going to do about it.

Our Father in the heavens, hallowed be your name. May your name be treasured and loved by us. May your name, Father, be made holy to us. May your name be the greatest name we know. May your name be the name we honor above every other name. May your name, Abba, be uniquely respected by our hearts, our souls, our minds, and our bodies.

Practical tips:

1. When you pray, make it personal. Identify the important roles you have in your life. Dad/mom/employee/employer/student/friend/teammate etc. (for me, it might be husband, father, pastor, for example.) Ask the Spirit to empower you to carry yourself in a way that lives up to your true Dad's name. Not so that you can be a great husband, or dad, or pastor. But so that your wife can know what a great heavenly Father she has. So your kids can know what a great heavenly Father they have. So that your congregation can know what a great heavenly Father they have.

Pray the prayer this way: May your name be treasured and loved by my wife/kids/brothers and sisters because of the way I reflect you to her/them/etc.

1b. Act like you've got a great dad. Which really means: Stop acting like you don't have a great dad. You know. Showing off. Being afraid. Worrying about the little stuff. Getting defensive about yourself. Gossiping. Seriously. You've got a great dad. Start acting like it.

2. Become part of the answer. Identify a favorite thing you've come to know about your Father in the heavens. Identify someone you know and care about who would be blessed to know that the way you know it. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you how you can cooperate with Jesus in revealing that aspect of the Father's name to the that person. Then do it, prayerfully. [My dad cares about the smallest things in my life, and he's bigger than my biggest enemies and challenges. I think it would bless my neighbors to know it...]

3. "Show me the money!" This one's for the men, especially those without kids of their own, or those whose kids are grown. Find a fatherless boy, and make yourself available to point him to the true Father in the heavens.

The Lord’s Prayer / Our Father, the One in the Heavens

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 10/14/2012

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.

Matthew 6 :9-13

Mystically Wired, page 5-6 (Our Brains Are Itching to Pray)...

When Jesus teaches his followers how to pray he tells them to start like this:

Our Father who is in heaven...

Our Father who is in heaven is here and he is now. Near, as close as our next breath. Even now, his arms encircling our sinful selves in loving embrace. And he's a Father, in the best sense of the word. A dad who couldn't be happier that we are his kids, a dad will stop at nothing to ensure we experience and are shaped by and become competent at love, a dad who moves heaven and earth for us and is moved at his core by us.

But for us, this text is loaded with all sorts of landmines that could distort Jesus' meaning; both about fathers and about heaven. For starters, 34% of children live absent their biological father, and 50% of those have never set foot in their father's home. And our conceptions about heaven are more often shaped by Hollywood movies than by the Holy scriptures.

First, let’s tackle the original wording of the text, and then consider what Jesus might be trying to teach us about this Father, and how to approach him.

πάτερ ἡμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς

PAH-tair | hay-MOHN | ha | en | tois | oo-rah-NOICE

father of us the [one] in the heavens

The classic translation, Our Father, who art in heaven, doesn't help us very much. It's like we're talking about a distant Father, one who is way out there. In our most common religious imagination, heaven is mainly a place we go after we die. In other words, although there’s nothing to rule out the ‘now-ness’ of the place (after all, we all know people who’ve already died, and figure they must be someplace), we tend to think of it as a future place. A later place. A down the road sort of place. Assuming the road we're on leads there, of course.

Wolfram Alpha query: Where is heaven? Result: Heaven is a metaphysical place people with certain virtues go in their afterlives according to various religions and spiritual philosophies.

But that's not what Jesus is talking about here. Thank God.

A little background might help.

οὐρανοῖς Nearly always a plural word. Generally referring to places inhabited and ruled by God. All Hebrews had at least 3 conceptions of heaven (some Rabbi’s 7, thus ‘7^th Heaven’)

The third heaven: the domain of God that is spiritual but nonetheless a definite place. God’s home. The place angels call home. The place where Jesus said he was going to prepare a home for us. A place that is meaningfully different than this earth; it is God soaked, God glistening, reverberating with worship, trembling with power, glorious.

The second heaven: what we might call outer space. A place where God’s presence and majesty are evident in the wondrous stars and planets and moons. A place orchestrated by and bearing witness to God.

The first heaven: what we might call the earth’s atmosphere, from the exosphere, to the thermosphere, the mesosphere, stratosphere, troposphere. The air that holds the clouds, that moves the leaves of the trees, that ruffles our hair, that carries the sound of my voice, that fills our lungs when we draw breath. Everything that we think of as empty, the Hebrews thought of as filled with God. A heaven infused with God’s living presence, in which he moves, from which he listens, and out of which he speaks.

When Jesus instructs us to pray to our Father, the one in the heavens, he's saying prayer begins by coming to our heavenly Father - not a distant Father in a land of harps and thrones, but the divine Father who is as close to us our next breath, surrounding the whole of our bodies, sensitive to every word that passes through our lips, even the faintest whisper.

[spin out the implications of a Father “in the heavens”… in the place of power, in the farthest reaches, and all around us.]

However, one of the challenges we have with Jesus' prayer is that many of our associations with the word “Father” are negative, not positive.

[Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone clip]

How difficult would it make it to pray if when we think of praying to "our Father" we imagine a papa like the one in the song?

Absentee. Someone who cares more about himself than about his kids. Someone undependable.

Or maybe, a strict disciplinarian. Emotionally distant. Someone who has the highest expectations for your life and the lowest tolerance for failure. Someone who’s pegged you as a no-good good-for-nothing.

Or maybe, someone who only cares how you make him look. Someone who will only be pleased when you’ve got a haircut and a new job. Someone who just doesn’t get you, who wants you to fit his mold.

[Donald Miller story, from Father Fiction, pg. 9-10...]

That's not the kind of Father Jesus is inviting us to come to in prayer.

He's talking about YHWH God, the one who met Moses at a burning bush when the Hebrew people were in slavery, and told Moses that he had a message for him to deliver to the Pharaoh, the god-man who was enslaving the Israelites:

And you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus said the Lord: My son, my firstborn, is Israel. And I said to you, Send off my son that he may worship Me, and you refused to send him off, and, look, I am about to kill your son, your firstborn.

Exodus 4:22-23

Now, that's a dad, isn't it? Hey you, Pharaoh. Yeah, you. Hands off that one. Why, you ask? He's my boy. His name's Israel, and he may have gotten mixed up with you for a while, but enough's enough. He called me and said he wants to come home. So that's it. Let him go. I'm telling you, keep messing with Israel, and I'll mess with you.

Setting theological implications aside for another conversation, isn't that the kind of dad you want when you're in trouble?

First, he's a dad who claims you as his own, no matter what kind of situation you're in.

When Jesus tells his followers to start prayer saying, "Our Father, the one in the heavens..." he's telling us that that same dad who rescued Israel from Pharaoh is our dad, too. And it's because God has chosen to call us his son, not for any other reason. That's what the good news is all about.

We're not like puppies in the pet store, hoping someone will adopt us. We come into prayer to a Dad who has already chosen us, for reasons that have nothing to do with our cuteness, or the tricks we can do, or how well we heel, or how housebroken we are.

And we're not a burden to him, not an inconvenience. Our Dad - the one in the heavens - longs to be our Dad, no matter what it costs him.

It’s just a fundamental fact of your reality, Jesus is saying. It’s not up for grabs based on your most recent behavior... Every student of Jesus comes into prayer with the privilege of a beloved son or daughter of Papa in the heavens. We begin our prayer, us frail, fragile, fickle human beings, declaring and depending on the one unchanging fact of our existence. God is our Father. Period.

Secondly, when we call God Father, we’re talking to the father who moves heaven and earth to take care of his kids. When we enter the place of prayer, Our Father is already acting on our behalf.

Since ancient times no one has heard,

No ear has perceived,

No eye has seen any God besides you,

Who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.

Isaiah 64:4

We don’t have to wake God up, rouse him to action. We’re coming to the Father who unleashed his wrath against his kids’ enemies. The Father who softened the hardest of hearts so that his kids could go free. The Father who split the sea to make a way out of exile for his kids. The Father who brought water out of a rock so his kids’ thirst would be satisfied in a dry land.

And, as the resurrection of the beloved son Jesus reveals, we come to a Papa who, far from being a rollin’ stone, is rollin’ stones away.

“From then on, to call on God as ‘Father’ was to invoke the God of the Exodus, the liberation God, the God whose kingdom was coming, bringing bread for the hungry, forgiveness for the sinner, and deliverance from the powers of darkness…The ‘Lord’s Prayer’ as many call it, is therefore not just a loosely connected string of petitions. It is a prayer for people who are following Jesus on the kingdom-journey.” -Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone

Prayer is relational before it is functional. No doubt about it. But prayer is not relational instead of functional. The two go hand in hand. Our Father is letting us in on the action. The relationship with God in which we are involved is one in which he is inviting us into his purposes: for our lives, for the lives of others, for the whole world.

When we step into the place of prayer, in the way Jesus teaches us, we are intimately intertwined with a Father who is transforming us from people who have lived as slaves into free people who have an inheritance in the promised land. A Father who has liberating designs on every life, in every corner of the world, for every corner of the world.

Dallas Willard describes Jesus-style prayer as “talking about what we are doing together”. This cooperation is implicit in the idea that we come to God as a child comes to her Father. We are not simply overwhelmed by God’s activity, while our own will, desires, personality are rendered irrelevant.

Let's dispel the classical idea of God as the “unmoved mover....” Our prayer matters. God is moved by us, by our prayer. God actually responds; it’s not a charade.

The universe responds to desire & will, the nature of the Trinitarian universe, founded on personal relationship. God is strong enough not to be moved, should he choose not to be, but he allows himself to be moved by his children. That is true greatness. He has a greatness so great that he can be moved and still accomplish his purposes. The Father Jesus invites us to come to in prayer might be called, in truth, the “most moved mover”.

[flexibility continuum, allowing kids to move us...]

Finally, the truth is, this Father / child thing that happens in prayer predates us. Our Father has always been a father. God was a Father before we were his kids. Jesus is just inviting us into something he's been experiencing since before the dawn of time.

To call God “Our Father” is to join ourselves with Jesus in his relationship with the Father. On our own, few of us would have any confidence to call God Father. Sure, God called Israel his son. But none of us, at least not on our own, is Israel. Few of us are even in the line of Abraham. We always come into the place of prayer with Jesus, brothers of his because of the good news and our response to it; we are never there without him. “Our” Father.

He in his resurrection body fully inhabiting the material world, and the material world inhabiting the heavens. Us, through faith, in him, together with him sons and daughters of our Father in the heavens. That's how prayer begins. Not a bad start, eh?

Practical tips:

1. WRITE & BURN. Write down what comes to mind when you think of a father. Read it out loud in the place you pray, and then burn it. Let the smoke make visible the air around you in which your heavenly Father is present. Invite him to show you what a true father is all about - to receive and heal your perceptions that have been formed badly, to receive and shine light on and amplify the perceptions that have been given to you as gifts.

2. PICTURE THE LOVE. To use a previously adapted phrase from my dad, there’s already “good vibrations” going on in the place of prayer. Jesus and the Father loving one another. The Holy Spirit, capital ‘L’ Love, the proper, personal noun Love, emanating from them.

Helpful to picture that as prayer begins. Me and Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit. [‘Being in a room exercise’ experience]

3. SAY IT OUT LOUD. Love flourishes in an atmosphere of confident trust. Take a risk, let the syllables slip off your tongue, tumble over your lips. Papa. Daddy. Father. Simply saying the word to God will be a cooperation with the Spirit of Jesus that the Father has given you, the Spirit of Sonship that calls out “Abba”, Father.

Prayer: Naked Faces

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 10/07/2012

video available at www.sundaystreams.com/go/milanvineyard/ondemand

The Hero’s journey and the integral role of prayer…

[Dinner table prayer clip from “Meet the Parents”]

You ever experienced prayer like that? Awkward. Mixed up with idea that somehow we’ve got to impress someone. Mixed up with the idea that there is some sort of formula, right words that get the response we’re looking for. Unsatisfying. A little contrived, maybe even ultimately silly.

You're not alone.

For some of us, we've only had two experiences of prayer in our lives. One is praying at the dinner table, and trying not to look like a fool, trying to come across halfway competent, make a good impression. The other is in some sort of crisis, where prayer is like our only hope, our last resort, and we're desperately trying to get it right, because if ever we needed prayer to work, this is it.

But Jesus' vision of prayer is much richer. For Jesus, prayer is as much a part of the fabric of life in response to the good news of the kingdom as eating delicious, nutritional food is a part of the fabric of biological life. And just like the nutritional value of food can get destroyed by preoccupation about image (bulimia, anorexia) or the joy of it can be taken away by preoccupation with achieving athletic performance, prayer can be robbed of its nutritional and joyful reward as well.

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him."

Matthew 6:5–8

[Dave Schmelzer’s first prayer…]

Two big ideas about prayer in light of Jesus' good news of God's kingdom. The first is that ugly (but) naked always beats pretty (but) fake. Especially when it comes to prayer. The second is that love means never having to manipulate. You only have to show up. Especially when it comes to prayer.

Let's start with ugly (but) naked beating pretty (but) fake.

God is the God of truth, of reality.

God made the real world, and it seems like he's into it. Like he cares about it. Like he'd die for it rather than abandon it. Like he wants to make it his home.

No matter how ugly it might be.

After all, isn't that what Jesus is getting at when he says "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek..."? All those people live in the realest part of the real world, don't they? And Jesus says the God of the kingdom is coming to them right where they are, with blessing. With life.

But if something is fake, if it's not true in the sense of reality being distorted, masked, God's not involved in it, is he? The air is stale there, because the Spirit has left the building. That's why the enemy of God's good creation is called the father of lies. The enemy twists the truth into something that isn't true, isn't real, and death keeps company with him.

Here's how the enemy works, for example (and don't worry, this may feel like a rabbit trail, and maybe it is, but it will lead us back to Jesus in Matthew 6, have no fear...)

the enemy puts a fearful thought into your mind, a hypothetical terrible situation, say something happening to one of your kids. And it stinks of death, and fear starts to trouble your heart. And you try to imagine God there in that situation, but the enemy whispers, God's not there, he's abandoned you. And it feels true to you, the thought that God's not there, because you can't sense him there. And now the fear becomes terror, and now it's gripped your heart and won't let go.

The insidious thing the enemy has done is drawn you into a place of unreality, where God is in fact absent and never will be present. So it's true, in a sense, when the enemy whispers that “God's not there” in that hypothetical horrifying situation. But it's not because God has abandoned you; it's that you have listened to the lie of the enemy and left reality behind for the unreality he has beckoned you to join him in. That's how fear gets a chokehold on us.

The real truth is, if the terrible situation ever were to actually come to pass, God would be there. But he won't be there until there is real. Because he is the God of reality.

So it's far more fruitful to pull yourself out of the imagined horror enough to ask yourself, is God here with me now? And then ask the God who is with you now, in your present frightened reality, will you be with me always?

If you're like most, you'll want to ask, perhaps, if that imagined reality will ever come to pass. However, I suspect you are unlikely to get an answer. Because faith grows when it's rooted in our certainty of God himself, not on our certainty of future events.

And because God generally only gives us the grace we need for today's reality, no more, no less.

Grace is like manna, I think. Grace comes day by day, moment by moment. But the grace we need for tomorrow's reality, whatever it may be, will be present for us then, rest assured.

What's true of all untrue things (that God is absent from them), is even true of the prettiest untrue things. And what's true of all true things (that God desires to be present in them and to them) is even true of the ugliest true things. Which is why ugly but naked always beats pretty but fake. Even prayer - especially prayer - is absent of God if it's twisted enough to not be true prayer.

In Jesus' example, the prayer of the play actors, the hypocrites, is the pretty but fake. Their prayer is a pretty mask to help them play dress up in front of others. But it's fake because it isn't directed at God, it's directed at the crowd with God's name in front of it. It's all an act. So no matter what is said, God's not involved in it.

“Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.”

The reward for the Pharisees, of course, is that they get everything they want but nothing they need. They get the praise of men, but it’s empty praise, based on deception. Worse, because they are living in a make believe world, they’re cut off from the God of the real world, and his kingdom, whose realness is breaking into and overwhelming and healing and restoring this world.

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.

Real prayer isn't about pretending to be someone else, it's about being who you really are before God. Naked faces, unmasked. Even if you think your face might be ugly.

Perhaps that's why Jesus describes normal prayer for his students as a private affair. In an inner room, door closed, secret. There we can be free to be ourselves before God. Faces naked.

[experience of being washed...]

When our faces are naked before God in prayer, our real selves are connected to the real God that undergirds reality. Pretty and ugly don't matter anymore, because glory radiates from the creator to the created, and is reflected back, magnifying beauty.

“When we pray we enter the real world, the substance of the kingdom, and our bodies and souls begin to function for the first time as they were created to function.”

-Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy

About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus…Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him.

Luke 9:28-32

It’s as Jesus was praying that the fullness of his glory becomes apparent. In prayer, who he truly is becomes visible.

Not only that, but the reality of the heavenly realm is opened up, Moses & Elijah are walking around talking. In prayer, Reality itself (Reality with a capital R), normally hidden, shrouded, inaccessible, but ultimately real, becomes clearer.

“Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

The reward for the one who prays with a naked face is the reward that comes from true communion with God. In prayer, we become aware of the reality of our selves, the reality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Out of that awareness loving relationship is formed. From which flows the truest form of reward: The God of reality inhabits our reality, and we inhabit his. In which, and from which we experience comfort, confidence, joy, peace, hope, love. Not to mention answered prayers and participation with God in his saving, liberating activity in the world.

And we emerge from prayer equipped to enter into loving relationships with others – grounded in God’s kingdom and secure in his love, free to relate unmasked, free of the desire to manipulate or control others, free to be generous in love, free of neediness.

Part 2: Love means never having to manipulate. You only have to show up. Especially when it comes to prayer.

“And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like the pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

Prayer is relational before it is functional. No doubt that prayer has a major role to play in God’s kingdom in “getting things done”, in effecting change, in mercy triumphing over judgment. Indeed, prayer is the most important “work” we do as students of Jesus. But “being” in prayer comes before “doing” in prayer. If we get that turned around, prayer gets bent out of shape, useless for either relationship or function.

Pagan prayer typified this inversion – prayer was designed to get things from a deity not unlike the way Ali Baba got treasure from the cave. "Open, Sesame!" (Heaven forbid you forget the right words, because then you're in a heap of trouble. Like Cassim: "Open Barley...." ) Pagan prayer was destined to become ornate and complex, because it wasn't actually directed to real gods. So it always fell on deaf ears. [Priest of Baal & Elijah in 1 Kings 18...] In the end it was only so much babbling.

Now, we know God isn't a magical door. But sometimes we think he's like Baal, just waiting for us to get our prayer right before he'll act.

How many of us have experienced a pressure to “get it right” in prayer? To say the right words, with the right attitude, so God would do what we wanted. Performance anxiety, it might be called.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus addresses that anxiety this way:

Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

All of that effort to get the words right is really an effort to manipulate God into doing what we want. Even if all we want is for him to approve of our prayer, to approve of us. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Jesus is suggesting to us, gently, that God loves us so much, that he's paying such close attention to us, that before we even get the words out, he knows what we need and his heart is inclined to give us his best.

We don't need to try to manipulate him because he's already where we want him to be.

All God is looking for from us is loving relationship. Us trusting him with our needs like a child trusts her dad. He entrusting us with the work of his kingdom, like a dad entrusts his son with the family business. And for that to happen, no manipulation is needed. The only thing that's needed is that we would show up. With naked faces presenting ourselves and our needs to him. And then he shows up, his naked face radiant with a love that meets our every need and transforms our broken selves into his image bearers in this broken world.

Practical Tips:

1. Let God under your mask.

· This is how I feel. Body. Emotions.

· This is how I feel about myself.

· This is how I feel about you.

· This is what I have been thinking about a lot.

· This is what some part of me wants.

· This is what I think I really want, deep down.

· This is what I think I need.

2. "Father, please help me pray."

3. Write your prayer down and then read it to God.

4. Try praying someone else's prayer & make it your own.

Communion: How, Who, When & Where

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 09/23/2012

video available at www.sundaystreams.com/go/MilanVineyard/ondemand

recap of mini-series on communion: meaning and significance, presence of Jesus in the meal, a sharing in the suffering and resurrection life of Jesus that speaks to our past, our present, and our future.

A celebration intended to reveal Christ among us has far too often made his presence obscure to those who haven’t yet put their faith in him. This isn’t a recent phenomena – it began even in the early days of the church.

We’ve mentioned before that our main task is not necessarily to understand precisely what’s happening in the communion meal, but rather to learn to obey Jesus in our celebration of it, and let him do among us through his Holy Spirit whatever he wants to. Today my aim is to help us obey Jesus as best we can by tackling the questions about the meal Jesus gave us of how, who, when, and where. We’re going to take the scenic route on our way to this particular destination…

Our text today will be 1 Corinthians 10-11. [comment on the church in Corinth]]

10:1-5

For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered over the desert.

comment on baptism, communion references; all had access to the signs of God’s favor, power, and presence, but only a few actually trusted God with their lives.

Favor, received with pride – trust in self - disobedience – death… dead end

10:6-13

Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: “The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in pagan revelry.” We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did—and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died. We should not test the Lord, as some of them did—and were killed by snakes. And do not grumble, as some of them did—and were killed by the destroying angel.

These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

This is an encouragement not to get complacent, and think that the gifts God gives makes one exempt from the labor of faithful living or immune from the consequences of faithlessness. Everything – the signs of God’s presence and power as well as the trials and temptations of life, and even God’s discipline – is designed to draw us deeper into a trusting a faithful God.

Favor, received with humility – trust in God – obedience – favor… life

10:14-22

Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. I speak to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.

Consider the people of Israel: Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar? Do I mean then that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons. Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy? Are we stronger than he?

complex argument here, especially for we moderns who have no experiences with ancient sacrificial religious practices…

pagan sacrifices were divisive by nature. The more one could afford to offer to a god in sacrifice, the more favor one could appropriate. One’s religious observances were a primary way of doing 2 things: (1) distinguishing yourself from others by purchasing the highest level of favor from the gods that you could afford, and (2) choosing which activities you wanted an endorsement to pursue: drunkenness from Dionysus, or lustfulness from Venus, violence from Mars, etc., etc.

This is in contrast to what happens for a Christian when we participate, through faith, in the sacrifice of Jesus. First, we are unified in the fact that the same sacrifice is required for, and offered for, each of us. My sin is no higher or lower than yours – it took the Son of God to pay for mine, it took the Son of God to pay for yours. My worth is no less or more than your worth. Our value in God’s eyes, based on the sacrifice offered on our behalf, is the same – the worth of his only begotten Son, Jesus.

And not only are we unified with each other, but we are also brought into communion with a God who is love through the sacrifice of Jesus. So there is no room for playing the field, for using the system. It’s not merely a business transaction.

A pagan might be able to buy an endorsement for drunkenness, and go pick up a six pack of lust, and a bag of new York cheddar violence. And Dionysus doesn’t care, as long as he gets his. And Venus doesn’t care as long as she gets hers. And Mars doesn’t care, as long as somebody gets what’s coming to him. Because the reality is, it’s all just different demonic manifestations of “not-love.” And all “not-love” cares about is the destruction of his supplicants.

But a follower of Jesus, in joining in the sacrifice of Jesus through the communion meal, is consuming and being consumed by love, and love alone. And if you know anything about love, it’s that love, in the end, wants all of us. Because all love wants is life for the objects of his affections, and only love will give life to them. So love is jealous for our lives, and doesn’t take kindly to anything that might bring destruction to us.

[significant other example…]

Now, before we get to the next section of the text, a couple of paragraphs on, a little background about the “love feast” or “agape feast”…first believers gathering for meal, fellowship, sharing, and climaxing with a communion celebration. Love and unity in action…

11:17-22

In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval. When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk. Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not!

comment on divisive, displeasing nature of Corinthian church’s practice…gluttony, exclusion, dishonor, drunkenness. Note ironic tone in vs. 19 – “no doubt there have to be differences to show which have God’s approval.”

11:23-34 (2 clicks)

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.

So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for each other. If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that when you meet together it may not result in judgment.

And when I come I will give further directions.

“in an unworthy manner…” Not, am I worthy of this? Rather, am I receiving this in the way that is worthy of it, in the way that it deserves? [chocolate bar illustration]

“ought to examine himself…” examine = test and approve. Not a question of should. Rather, a question of why. Why am I coming to this meal today? Am I here so that I can win the approval of God and others and go about indulging my own desires? Am I here because I am better than the sinful slobs who so often surround me?

Or am I here because I am in need of Jesus, Jesus who I will meet in worship, and in his words, and in my brothers and sisters gathered around me, and in the bread and cup of the Lord’s meal?

Remember – pride leads ultimately to death. We want to stop it in its tracks while there is still time to humbly receive the life that is right before us. If our examination reveals humility already at work in us, praise God.

Note: not about introspection and cataloguing of our sins so that we repent of every one. We’d be here all day… We’re just trying to make sure pride hasn’t been invited to dinner, and if it has, that we send it away sulking before we eat. Otherwise it will gorge itself and the rest of us leave unnourished.

“Without recognizing the body of the Lord…” It is essential that we recognize Jesus present with us not just in the bread, but specifically in reference to the church gathered together, the body of the Lord.

If you can’t accept Jesus’ presence in your brothers and sisters in Christ, Paul is saying, then you can’t accept Jesus’ presence. Period. And so you remain in judgment, in pride, holding yourself distant from the saving grace of Christ.

“That is why many among you who are weak and sick…” Let’s start by saying what Paul does not mean:

Paul DOES NOT mean if someone is sick, or weak, or dead, it is because he celebrated communion with an unrepented for sin in his heart. If it were so, we’d perhaps have warrant to police communion. You know, to protect people from unwittingly bringing death upon their own heads. But also, if this were so, we’d all be unwittingly bringing death upon our own heads. Because we all have unrepented for sin in our hearts.

Weakness, Illness, and death (and all other manner of bad things) occupy the territory beyond the borders of God’s kingdom come in fullness. Sometimes they visit us because we live in a time when God’s kingdom is both already and not yet here, and our spirits cry out to God in longing for the restoration of all things and the sweet return of Jesus, the savior of the world, who will bring God’s kingdom in fullness in the fullness of time. Sometimes we encounter them when we step out of God’s kingdom through our own disobedience, whether because of willful sin, or sinful responses to other’s sin against us, or old habits, or lack of discipline. Sometimes God sends them our way to show us that we are living in dangerous territory and we would do well to run back into his arms. Sometimes God brings us face to face with them so we can reach through them and find his conquering presence on the other side. Or to form in us something essential for his purposes for our lives and this world.

What Paul is saying is this: the sickness experienced by many in the Corinthian church was an indication of the Corinthian’ unwillingness, and/or inability to come with their needs to Jesus, present in their brother’s and sisters in Christ, and present on the cross, due to their pride. They were therefore living, by their own wrong-hearted choices, in judgment, not in the grace of God’s kingdom. And so they were helpless against weakness, and sickness, even to the point of physical death -- as is every human being who is disconnected from Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life. God was, out of love for the Corinthians, using every means at his disposal to bring the Corinthians humbly back to the cross of Christ and the communion of the saints.

Paul is driving at this basic point: We cannot come to Jesus to show that we are better than another person. We cannot come to Jesus and receive only the parts of him that we like and despise the rest of him. We cannot come to Jesus hoping to attain a magical potion that will protect us while we live according to our pleasure outside of his kingdom. If we pretend to come to Jesus in this manner, we will come away without him. Without the one who is our life, our strength, our sustenance in difficulty, and our hope. And so, naturally, our strength will be depleted, our bodies and souls will become sick, and in the end death will overtake us.

But if we come together to the foot of Jesus’ cross, unified both by our need of him and by our response to his holy call on our lives, in humility and love, we will meet with Jesus, and share with him in his redeeming death on the cross and resurrection life.

“And when I come, I will give further directions…” What those further directions are, we don’t know. Perhaps they have something to do with the ones I’ll offer to you now in rapid fire fashion.

Who can participate? Anyone who is willing to receive the bread and the cup with the anticipation of sharing in Jesus’ suffering on the cross and in his resurrection life, and who is willing to also receive the others Jesus has called to be part of God’s family with him as brothers and sisters.

Can all baptized students of Jesus participate? Yes. Can men and women who haven’t yet been baptized but have given their lives to Jesus? Yes. But I’d also encourage you to be baptized – talk to me personally if you’d like – as the worldwide church has from its earliest days recognized baptism as the primary sign of entrance into the community of faith. Can children who haven’t yet been baptized but who are embracing what they’ve learned of Jesus through the faith of their guardians? Yes, at the discretion of their guardians.

What if someone is taking communion who doesn’t fit the above criteria? Maybe they clearly do not understand what it is about, or if they do, are choosing to disregard its meaning and purpose?

Step one: relax. Jesus served Judas, knowing full well what was in Judas’ heart. Judas’ conscience was given the job of policing Judas regarding the bread and cup, and we would do well to allow other’s consciences the same privilege.

Step two: relax again. God’s kindness, the scriptures say, leads to repentance. Perhaps the person in question is afraid to stick out like a sore thumb by not participating. That might well be our fault, for allowing thumbs that stick out to get sore from the elements and our withering gazes, rather than giving their owners a ride in our car. Repentance on our part might be in order if that’s the case.

Perhaps they are curious, or at the end of their ropes, just wondering, hoping that God might actually show up. More power to them…maybe He will show up…he surely did to Cleopas and his companion that night in Emmaus, much to their surprise.

If simple lack of understanding is the issue, in love we can do our best to teach what we know about the meal, and let the person judge for himself whether or not to participate.

Who can lead it?

Anyone…history of priests presiding. Jesus is the true host of the meal…

When and Where? Whenever and wherever 2 or more are gathered in Jesus’ name and the Holy Spirit leads you to share the meal together.

I’d encourage you to exercise discernment about whether or not it will serve the purposes of unity and love and give glory to Jesus, but if the prompting passes that test, then go for it.

Small groups in homes? Sure. Bible study groups at school or work? Sure. Husbands and wives? Why not? In a hospital room? Definitely.

Sunday morning at church? Let’s do it.

Communion: Body and Blood

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 09/16/2012

video stream available at www.sundaystreams.com/go/MilanVineyard/ondemand

podcast available on itunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/vineyard-church-of-milan/id562567379 or subscribe to the rsss feed: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/89406141/MilanVineyardChurch.xml

God is up to something. He’s got plans for this world. He’s got plans for you and plans for me. He’s taking what’s broken and hurting and dying and transforming it into wholeness and health and life. He’s setting people who have been living in slavery free. He’s letting people in on a new kind of life, inviting human beings into the celebration of love at the center of the universe. The death and resurrection of his son, Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, is the climax of that plan, and the power center from which the energy for this worldwide revolution is emanating.

Jesus wants to be the life in every circumstance and part and moment of our lives. He wants to be the life in our work, in our relationship with our families and friends and neighbors; he wants to be the life in our sorrow and pain and longing, and in our joy and celebration and wonder. For those of us who, by God’s grace, have entrusted ourselves to his kingship, who he is and what he has done and the love he has for us sustains and invigorates every aspect of our existence.

Jesus has given us, his students, a meal to share, a freedom meal, that puts us together with Jesus at the moment of his momentous victory, and that puts us together with the whole family of God in the midst of our journey through this not yet fully transformed world, and that brings the promises of God’s kingdom coming in fullness to bear on our lives now.

However, anything symbolic and powerful tends to attract controversy and strong feelings. [footballer in Glasgow nearly starting a riot by pretending to play a flute story…] Similarly, the meal Jesus gave us has become surrounded by controversy and strong feelings, tragically producing division rather than the unity it is intended to support.

Ironic that the meal is made up of bread and wine, the body and blood of Jesus. Because the body is a symbol in the scriptures of the unity between brothers and sisters, between Jesus and his church. And yet the meal has been the epicenter of the disunity among Christ followers. Even to the point of blood being shed, not in the holy sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, but in the unholy disputes among bickering brothers and sisters. [brief comment on the reformation history and how communion lands at the center of it…]

This week we’ll tackle some of the most common questions that have surrounded the Communion meal.

[note Vineyard churches’ general approach to these kinds of questions – cool Vatican story]

What’s with all the names?

(credit Tom Wright’s the Meal Jesus Gave Us)

The early church had four main ways of referring to the meal they shared in remembrance of Jesus’ death on the cross. Often, they simply used a descriptive term, calling the meal “the bread breaking”, or the “breaking of the bread.” Acts 2:46-47

Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Acts 2:46-47

Sometimes it was called “the sharing,” which is an English translation of the Greek word koinonia. Koinonia can also be translated “communion,” because we share, or commune, with Jesus in his death and risen life.

Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a sharing in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf.

1 Corinthians 10:16-17

Other times it was referred to as “the thank-you meal”, because Jesus took the bread and cup and gave thanks to God for it; similarly, when we celebrate the meal, we give thanks to the Father for the sacrifice of his son, Jesus. The Greek word for thank you is “eucharisteo,” from which we get the term “Eucharist.”

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

1 Corinthians 11:23-24

Many called it the Lord’s Meal, or the Lord’s Supper, referring to its origins as the meal Jesus celebrated with his disciples the night he was arrested.

In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

1 Corinthians 11:25

Later, after Christianity had reached Rome, a new term became common, and still is among Roman Catholics. At the time, church services would be celebrated in Latin and at the end the person presiding over the meal would say, “Go - you are sent out.” This was because when we have been nourished by the death and risen life of Jesus, we have all we need to serve him powerfully in the world. The Latin phrase for “Go – you are sent out” is “ite – missa est.” That phrase is the origin of the term “the Mass,” the sending or commissioning meal.

How is Jesus present in the meal?

Over the years, and across denominations, Christians have wrestled with this question. It all goes back to how one is to interpret Jesus’ statements when he passed around the bread and the cup: “This is my body...this is my blood…” A continuum of opinions exist, from those on the one end who hold that somehow the inner substance of the bread is transubstantiated, or becomes, Jesus’ actual flesh (and similarly in the case of the wine or grape juice, his blood) to those who hold that it simply signifies, or points the way in our mind towards, Christ’s body.

[history lesson: Aristotle, accident & substance, transubstantiation… Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, 1529, a castle in Marburg, Germany…Hoc est corpus meus; depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is…Johannes Oecolampadius: Aramaic, “This – my body”… It’s the space between the words that opens up the mystery to us… Calvin?: No, John Calvin: the miracle is that we are taken into heaven, where Jesus reigns]

Followers of Jesus find they are often required to hold truths about God in tension with one another. Grace & Judgment. Justice & Mercy. One God who is Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. Free Will and Pre-destination. Faith & Good Works. If we try to find a satisfactory explanation we end up settling for less than the truth and find our selves trying to defend our position with increasingly complex rationales which lead to frustrating or nonsensical conclusions.

Jesus says that when we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner we are doing those things for him. How exactly does that work? It’s hard to say, precisely. Seems to be more than metaphor but not exactly literal. Falls in the realm of mystery. But it’s no less true. The apostle Paul says that the church is the body of Christ. How exactly does that work? It’s hard to say, precisely. Seems to be more than metaphor but not exactly literal. Falls in the realm of mystery. But it’s no less true.

We would do well to receive the truth of the bread and cup, the body and blood of Jesus in the same manner. Seems to be more than metaphor but understanding it literally doesn’t do it justice, either. How exactly does it work? It’s hard to say, precisely. Falls in the realm of mystery. But no less true. We’ve got to be willing to live with the tension mystery creates.

Apparently, Jesus considers that tension to be healthy for our us. Jesus himself doesn’t go to great lengths to explain it. (his disciples in fact, would have likely been even more confused than us at the time of first sharing it). That’s significant, in my mind. He just commands us to share the meal, and there is evidence that when we obey him, even if we don’t precisely understand him, Jesus himself is revealed and present. And that, at the end of the day, is what matters. So we might as well get comfortable with the tension.

View most helpful to me: Timeline…We are eating food in the present that acts as a symbol of God’s future nourishment and sustenance. This food is also the food about which Jesus declared: “My body, my blood.” Mysteriously, the Holy Spirit works within us to anticipate the life we will enjoy when God’s kingdom comes in fullness. In a sense this is like the mirror image of what Calvin describes…we are not taken to heaven so much as heaven is brought to us. So this food becomes a true anticipation of the food that will sustain us in the life to come. And that food is Jesus.

“This – my body…This – my blood”

But again, not to put too fine a point on it, communion comes alive in the doing. what we need most of all, is to actually share the meal with one another in obedience to Jesus, with faith that he will be present and teach us what he wants to teach us through it. We need enough understanding to enter meaningfully into the meal, but communion is not something to be mastered. Just as Jesus is someone we must know enough to enter meaningfully into relationship with, but not someone to be mastered.

Let’s try an illustration that helps get to this:

Singing about our hunger for intimacy with God in the song, Discotheque, Bono of U2 sings…

You know you're chewing bubblegum

You know what that is

But you still want some

You just can't get enough

Of that lovie dovie stuff

[(pass out Dubble Bubble to everyone). Lead people through interacting with gum, understanding song, seeing the impact that relationship with something has on how we know it.]

In other words, we are to enter into the communion meal the same way we enter into relationship with Jesus, and let it teach us through the very doing of it. We enter into relationship in the space between the words. This bread – my body. This wine – my blood. Come to it as you come to me. With joy, celebration, repentance, anticipation, hunger, hope, faith. And in the company of a ragamuffin band, unjudging towards them, loving them because I love them, grace-filled towards them because of my grace towards them. Receive it as you receive me. Wholeheartedly, humbly, with gratitude and wonder.

Ok, one last thing for today:

What’s this sentence all about?: “For whenever you eat this bread, and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

Celebrating this meal is an action that says something. It proclaims. It announces. When we share the bread and the cup together, we are saying, to each other, to ourselves, to anyone who might be listening: Jesus’ death in the past has become our life, and his risen life now sustains us, in these dying bodies, in this broken world, until the time he returns to make all things new. When we share the bread and cup together, we are looking backwards and saying to our past, to our old selves, to the ghosts that would haunt us: Jesus’ death has conquered you and your authority over me is history. We are looking forwards and saying to our future, and its attendant worries, concerns, anxieties, anticipated sufferings: Jesus’ return is through you, and on the other side of you, so quiet your murmurings and your clamor, because Jesus will surely have the only certain and final say in my life.

Practical Tips:

1. Practice resisting disunity before you eat and drink. Perhaps practice the more commonly catholic practice of making the sign of the cross. Perhaps ask God’s blessing on an estranged brother or sister before you eat. Perhaps repent of a judgment you have held towards another brother or sister.

2. Make space for the mystery. Mystery invites reflection. Take some time to reflect on anything Jesus might want to speak to you through his holy spirit. Take a moment to ask him for something on your heart. Don’t rush through the meal – it’s bad for digestion. Savor it as you would savor Jesus’ presence if you were aware of it right now.

Communion: Actions Speak Louder than Words

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 09/09/2012

video available at www.sundaystreams.com/go/MilanVineyard/ondemand

Beginning a 3 part mini-series on the communion meal, the Lord’s supper, the Eucharist, etc.

Show “whenever I say your name” presentation

There is power and mystery and depth to Communion. It is no ordinary meal. No ordinary celebration. Communion looks back to the events that led to freedom from sin and death and evil, and looks forward to a time when the dream will be fully realized. It’s a celebration that’s meant to draw all Christians together, to remind us of what we hold in common, to unite us. It’s a celebration that’s meant to not just be observed for the sake of a good time, but to say something and to impart something sustaining to its participants.

We’ll try to answer the following questions:

1. Where does this celebration come from?

2. What does it all mean? And…

3. Why does it have so many names?

We’ll also talk about some of the hard to understand verses in the Bible and what they’re saying about how Christians are to celebrate the meal Jesus gave us. We’ll discuss how Jesus is present in the celebration, and who is invited to participate. All in all, hopefully we’ll all have a deeper understanding of what’s happening when we celebrate Communion, and why it’s so important.

The communion meal is an action that is meant to speak louder than words. It is an action that is meant to say something to us. An action in which we participate, and in our participation, we say something to one another. And to God. But even more than that, the communion meal is an action, a concrete reality, that acts upon us. Something real happens in its happening. Something real happens within us, between us, among us. The words that communion communicates, we might say, are made flesh, and dwell among us.

You might ask, what in the world does that mean?

Consider.

We know that actions speak louder than words. The medium always thunders over the message. [examples:…I love you (words, gestures, service)…"If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you”]

Even more than that, an action can accomplish, can make real, the very thing that it’s saying. A meaningless action may accomplish nothing. A hateful action can create hate. A loving action can build love.

[St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, VA. 2 calls for communion. 1^st for masters and their families downstairs. 2^nd for slaves in segregated balcony. Sunday, April 9^th, after the surrender in Appomattox Court House, former slave coming down aisle to receive communion, joined arm in arm by bearded white man…]

The action says something, powerfully, far more powerfully than words ever could. But it also does something. Something actually changes through the action. Something is mysteriously embodied, created, made real and concrete.

Communion is like that. A concrete action – a powerful celebration, really – given to us by Jesus so that he could say something to us, over and over and over again. And so that we could say something to him, over and over and over again. And so that we could say something to one another, over and over and over again. So that something would be accomplished, done among us, embodied, created, made real and concrete within us, between us, among us, over and over and over again, bit by bit by bit. Until he comes again to bring his new creation work to completion.

But actions don’t communicate very effectively if we don’t understand their meaning, do they? [examples…] So in order for communion to be the meaningful and powerful celebration Jesus intends for it to be for us, we need to begin by learning its meaning.

Let’s start by going back to the beginning, to a meal whose acquired name suggests an ending rather than a beginning, the Last Supper. Jesus and his friends have gone to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, or the Passover, and gathered in a generous host’s upper room to eat together. We pick up the account in Luke’s gospel:

Read Luke 22:1-22

22 Now the Festival of Unleavened Bread, called the Passover, was approaching, ²and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some way to get rid of Jesus, for they were afraid of the people. ³Then Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot, one of the Twelve. ⁴And Judas went to the chief priests and the officers of the temple guard and discussed with them how he might betray Jesus. ⁵They were delighted and agreed to give him money. ⁶He consented, and watched for an opportunity to hand Jesus over to them when no crowd was present.

⁷Then came the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. ⁸Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover.”

⁹“Where do you want us to prepare for it?” they asked.

¹⁰He replied, “As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters, ¹¹and say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ ¹²He will show you a large room upstairs, all furnished. Make preparations there.”

¹³They left and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover.

¹⁴When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. ¹⁵And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. ¹⁶For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.”

¹⁷After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. ¹⁸For I tell you I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”

¹⁹And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

²⁰In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. ²¹But the hand of him who is going to betray me is with mine on the table. ²²The Son of Man will go as it has been decreed. But woe to that man who betrays him!”

We’re not going to spend much time focusing on the role of Judas the betrayer in this story, but it is important to recognize that the last supper, the first communion, takes place not in time of peace, security, and joy, but in the swirl of passions, intrigue, chaos, conflict. Evil is, almost literally, breathing down Jesus’ neck at this point in his life. It reminds us of the famous verse in psalm 23: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies…”

It’s also helpful to understand that Jesus wasn’t doing something entirely original here; Jesus and his students are most likely celebrating the Passover Seder meal, a meal that was already full of meaning and purpose, and followed a particular pattern every time that it was celebrated. Jesus gives the Passover a dramatic twist that turns it into something different and new, and in some ways more than it was before.

Little of what Jesus was driving at will make sense unless we understand the original celebration that he fundamentally transformed…

The first Passover took place more than 1400 years prior to the one we read about in Luke’s account. Background: Passover / freedom meal…slavery in Egypt, 10^th plague, death of firstborns, blood of lamb on doorposts…

Passover looked backwards to Egypt (lamb, bitter herbs, unleavened bread)… and forward to God’s full reign (he’d been faithful to his promise of rescue to Moses, therefore he’d be faithful to his promise of complete restoration)…all, even generations later, understood the exodus as happening to them personally…ate reclining at table, signifying freedom, nobility.

Their celebration bound them together and declared them to be unmistakably God’s family, those who could rely on his promise of provision and rescue and finally perfect presence (in the cloud and the pillar and the law and the tabernacle and the temple and eventually in the Messiah). All of Israel would gather in Jerusalem….

Jesus takes this Passover meal and infuses it with new meaning and power. In him the promise of the Passover is being fulfilled. Through him, humanity is being set free from the slave master of sin and death, and is being led into the land of promise, the kingdom of God.

And he took bread, gave thanks… The Passover bread Jesus passed around would have been unleavened, for two reasons. Leaven was a starter, old fermented dough as a rising agent. Leftovers, essentially. Unleavened bread symbolized God’s people having a fresh start, something completely new and uncorrupted happening. And secondly, to represent the urgency and haste with which Israel had left Egypt; there had been no time for the bread to rise, so it had been made quickly, without yeast, in order to sustain Israel on her flight from Egypt. Like an MRE, a meal ready to eat.

The disciples would have expected Jesus to present the bread to them with the words, “This is the bread of affliction our ancestors ate when they came from Egypt.”

But Jesus says, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” Jesus, the bread of affliction? Israel’s sustenance on her flight from slavery? Yes. Jesus is telling his friends that the hour of freedom is coming with haste, in the middle of the night, and all they will have for nourishment on their journey into God’s free kingdom, into the promised land, is him. His friends would have remembered and begun to understand the words he spoke in Capernaum,

“I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” John 6:48-51

In the same way, after supper he took the cup… There were four times that a cup of wine would be blessed and shared at the Seder Meal. Some suggest that the third cup of wine represented the sacrificial lamb’s blood on the doorposts, the sign to God of his promise to spare Israel from the wrath of the angel of death, and that may be correct. Others disagree because of the general distaste (no pun intended) in Jewish law and custom toward the idea (even symbolic) of drinking blood of any kind. But all agree that Jesus’ statement, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you,” would have been both shocking and a radically new interpretation of the cup.

Israel had been looking for a new Moses, not a new lamb. Jesus was saying, in effect, “I am the lamb that is to be slaughtered to preserve you from the hand of death. It is my blood on your doorposts that will mark you out as holy, as members of the family of God. My blood poured out in death will not in fact be the end of the story, but the blood that secures the promise of God’s coming kingdom – the new covenant, the new agreement between God and humanity. Receive me, and you will receive life. My life, poured out in death, will become your life.”

Read Jeremiah 31:31-34

³¹“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,

“when I will make a new covenant

with the house of Israel

and with the house of Judah.

³²It will not be like the covenant

I made with their ancestors

when I took them by the hand

to lead them out of Egypt,

because they broke my covenant,

though I was a husband to them,”

declares the Lord.

³³“This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel

after that time,” declares the Lord.

“I will put my law in their minds

and write it on their hearts.

I will be their God,

and they will be my people.

³⁴No longer will they teach their neighbors,

or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’

because they will all know me,

from the least of them to the greatest,”

declares the Lord.

“For I will forgive their wickedness

and will remember their sins no more.”

Jesus doesn’t give his students a theory to help them understand what his death and resurrection were to mean to them. Our obedience to him does not take the form of discussions and intellectual exercise. As important as those things are, they are not obedience in themselves; they are meant to help us obey.

Jesus gives them an action to perform, an action that cannot be done by one’s self. He gives his students a meal to eat together. The power of his life, his death, his resurrection would come alive to them as they, in obedience to him, shared it together. Our obedience cannot happen fully by ourselves, either. We may wrestle with God alone in the night, but our choice to obey, to trust Jesus, will always lead us into relationship with one another.

We see that in the story of Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus with Jesus, shortly after his resurrection. He explained the scriptures to them, their hearts burned within them, but they did not recognize him.

Read Luke 24:30-35

³⁰When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. ³¹Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.

³²They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

³³They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together ³⁴and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.” ³⁵Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread.

He took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and they were drawn to their brothers and sisters and energized to engage in Christ’s mission.

All that came of sharing the meal together, the freedom meal.

So perhaps our hearts are burning within us—hungry for the freedom Jesus has won for us, hungry for his coming kingdom, hungry for his sustaining power, thirsty for holiness, thirsty for his Spirit alive in our lives.

Let’s share the bread and the cup, in obedience to Jesus, and be invigorated by his presence among and within us…

Practical Tips:

1. Let Jesus be your bread.

Think of all the things that you experience as your normal sustenance. Money, stuff, work, hobbies, even people. Families, friends, lovers. Come to the meal and recognize that all of the life you get from them comes only when and because Jesus is present to you in and through them. Say, out loud, even under your breath, “Jesus, you are my life” as you bring the bread to your lips.

2. Raise a glass to the promise.

You are aware of the evil, sin, and death that breathes down your neck in your life, the chaos that swirls around. The new covenant, sealed with the shedding of Jesus’ blood, is a promise that it cannot touch you with Jesus’ lifeblood upon your doorpost. So as you drink the cup, raise it and say, “Jesus, your love has secured my life.”

3. Serve Jesus’ life and promise to someone else.

Share the communion meal with a friend, a family member, the person behind you in line. Take the tray from the usher if you desire. Say, as you do, the body of Christ broken for you. The blood of Jesus shed for you. Let it remind you that every brother and sister is enlivened by Jesus, and that their lives are secured by him, and that your job as their brother and sister is to recognize and participate in his life in them, and to encourage them to have faith in that promise.